{"id":14355,"date":"2018-02-20T18:45:24","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T00:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=14355"},"modified":"2018-02-20T18:46:08","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T00:46:08","slug":"14355","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/02\/20\/14355\/","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes Subtlety Should Be Replaced"},"content":{"rendered":"

On\u00a0Lawfare\u00a0<\/b><\/i>Timothy Edgar\u00a0compares and contrasts\u00a0<\/a>the Mueller indictment<\/a> of the\u00a0Internet Research Agency\u00a0<\/b><\/i>with a previous indictment of Chinese PLA (Army) officers for hacking into U.S. companies for purposes of stealing intellectual property, an indictment of which Edgar approved in both theory and handling by the Obama Administration:<\/p>\n

The Chinese ultimately decided to forgo issuing retaliatory indictments in favor of diplomacy.\u00a0 No one went to jail, but the U.S. indictments worked: China and the United States eventually agreed that neither side would \u201cconduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are two\u00a0big\u00a0differences that will make such a happy outcome much more difficult in the case of the Russian hackers.\u00a0 First, the issue of interference in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 is more significant than theft of intellectual property by Chinese hackers.\u00a0 Russia\u2019s interference implicates both U.S. sovereignty and ideals that are at the core of American identity.\u00a0 The fact that the Russian campaign was directed against such vital national security interests weighs in favor of a very tough response by the United States.<\/p>\n

Second\u2014and more problematic, from the U.S. point of view\u2014is that the United States is on weaker ground when it comes to international norms in this case than it was in the case of the Chinese hackers.\u00a0In the latter instance, the Obama administration argued that the theft of intellectual property is distinct from the work of the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.\u00a0 Articulating this principle put the U.S. on a firm footing in discussions with the Chinese.\u00a0 It helped that President Obama had issued\u00a0

my evaluation<\/a> of the recent indictments, Edgar doesn’t see it as a threat so much as a discussion starting point:<\/p>\n

But the indictment does serve a useful purpose.\u00a0 It sends a warning\u2014not to Putin, but to Americans.\u00a0 The U.S. government can\u2019t control what Putin does by issuing indictments. But Americans can\u2014and must\u2014do a whole lot more to defend ourselves against foreign interference in our elections.\u00a0 We can start by 1) encrypting our communications and data;\u00a02) securing our election infrastructure;\u00a0and 3) working with social media companies to combat \u201cfake news\u201d by exposing state-sponsored trolls. This threat is not going away any time soon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yet, here’s how I think this should really work out.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The President sends a diplomatic note to the Russians requesting immediate extradition.<\/li>\n
  2. The Russians reply with a suitably snarky\u00a0No<\/i>.<\/li>\n
  3. The sunny reply to that is,\u00a0We’re pleased you have agreed to our request, and the\u00a0entire\u00a0<\/b>United States 5th Fleet will be coming to the port of Vladivostok in order to place them under arrest. Your cooperation will be appreciated. We’ll send in an LST for the actual pickup.<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Sure, it’s lurid and ridiculous. It also amuses me greatly. And you just know Theodore Roosevelt would have done it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    On\u00a0Lawfare\u00a0Timothy Edgar\u00a0compares and contrasts\u00a0the Mueller indictment of the\u00a0Internet Research Agency\u00a0with a previous indictment of Chinese PLA (Army) officers for hacking into U.S. companies for purposes of stealing intellectual property, an indictment of which Edgar approved in both theory and handling by the Obama Administration: The Chinese ultimately decided to forgo \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14357,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14355\/revisions\/14357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}